dead zone.

Anne Sexton today

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.

I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.

Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.

I know well the grass blades you mention,

the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.

Like carpenters they want to know which tools.

They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,

have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,

have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,

warmer than oil or water,

I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.

Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.

Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born, they don’t always die,

but dazzled, they can’t forget a drug so sweet

that even children would look on and smile.

To thrust all that life under your tongue!—

that, all by itself, becomes a passion.

Death’s a sad bone; bruised, you’d say,

and yet she waits for me, year after year,

to so delicately undo an old wound,

to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,

raging at the fruit a pumped-up moon,

leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of the book carelessly open,

something unsaid, the phone off the hook

and the love whatever it was, an infection.

But besides that, we're too quiet. Never allowing ourselves to scream or be loud, never allowing our expressions to be direct. or honest enough. that is our most sickness.

Along with the toxins from cooked foods, monogamy is making everyone sick.

reminded why I only go out on the town once in a while.

Becoming bored of things is somewhat interesting to me.

I had the feeling like that I was dead
and since then have been just walking around lucid in the afterlife.

Looking at oneself and seeing oneself are two different things.

A banana peel is a very beautiful sensual animal.

Traveling on a train is quite nice.

And anyway you've got a girlfriend or you're polyamorus or you're celibate.

allthemodernthingshavealwaysexisted

It's true.

Time. Light. margins.

extras.
erasures.
imperialistic impossible plastics.

JUly 6 2010 JUly 6 2010

give it up.